In conjunction with Microsoft Nokia and the UCT centre for ICT4D (Information and Communication for development) I have been involved with the front-end design and conceptualization for a Sierra-Leonian Application which is intended to curb maternal mortality in this country. With research and development by Professor Gary Marsden and (soon to be Dr) Maletsabisa Molapo, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in the development process.
Due to copyright constraints, I can only share some of the promotional content, and illustrations for the app. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more with you soon.
Context:
Sierra Leone has the world’s highest maternal mortality rates during childbirth . We are partnering with a group of midwives from Health Poverty Action who are training traditional birth attendants (TBAs) to reduce this number.
Problem:
We need to create a system that allows the midwives to create digital training information which they can then distribute to the handsets of the TBAs. This requires us to (1) Give the midwives guidelines and samples of appropriate media (2) Create a piece of software that allows this media to be edited together and uploaded to the TBAs’ handsets.
Progress to date:
(1) We have settled on using and adapting images and information from UNESCO and Hesperian for the mobile screen. Video was found to be too complicated to shoot given the resources available in Sierra Leone
(2) We have been working on adapting our Big Board technology to create a distribution system for the training materials. We have also engaged the midwives to create user-centred prototypes for the authoring system.
Future:
This project will run until the end of 2012. In that time we will refine our authoring solution so that it can be used autonomously by the midwives and create further mobile resources for them to use in their training.
We also believe this system will be of use in other contexts where a group of trainers need to communicate material to people who have limited resources.